Impossible in a cabin as small as Cabin 7.
“Yeah, I’ll be there in time for dinner, so save me a spot, will you, Mom?”
A pause.
“Give Baby Ginny a kiss for me and can you take a picture of her and send it to this phone?”
I listened while he cooed over the picture and realized that I now had a picture of a baby on my phone.
“How was the skiing? Did you do any Black Diamonds? Oh, you went night skiing? How was it?”
That had to be the brother.
“Thanks, dad. I’ll fill out the rest of the paperwork when I get there.” A pause. “I love you too, dad.”
Gah. I wasn’t jealous or anything, but maybe I was. Jonah and Royce were so wrapped up in each other that as a third wheel, I was often on my own. Hence the reason I did not go on the cruise with them.
I figured once we got up to Steamboat, Alex would go his way and I would go mine, and I could pretend that we’d never met.
That was really the easiest way, forgetting.
Rather than me pining after a dreamboat of a guy who smelled nice and who had the softest skin I’d ever licked.
Rather than having naughty thoughts about climbing him like a tree and having my wicked way with him.
Rather than having any feelings about a guy who was out of my league.
I waited, and he just kept talking, so I wandered outside into the crisp, cold, high altitude air. The sky overhead was a diamond-hard blue without a single cloud anywhere. The sun reflected off the snow drifts and glittered on huge icicles that were already starting to drip. I cupped my hands and blew on them and thought I heard my name.
“Beck!”
Looking up, I saw that Alex was standing in the open doorway of Cabin 7. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted, but he was waving me close so, being totally responsive to that casual wave and smiling face, I trotted over. He held out my phone to me and I thought he was just giving it back, so I was going to shove it in my pocket. But he stopped me.
“It’s Mom. She wants to talk to you.”
I was never the boy anybody brought home to meet their mother. Never the boy anyone wanted eventalkingto their mother. But Alex was insistent, and his smile was pretty wide (such perfect teeth!), so I figured it wasn’t anything bad and took the phone.
It felt warm in my hand from Alex’s grasp.
“Hello?” I asked, not feeling inclined to be any kind of welcoming chatterbox.
“Is this Beck?” a woman’s voice asked. Before I could answer, she went on in a tone that was bright and well-fed and incredibly rich. “This is Jasmine Westmore, Alex’s mom, and I wanted to thank you for saving my son’s life yesterday.”
“I didn’t—” I started, because the last thing I wanted was for some rich dame to feel any obligation to me. I just wanted to get on with my mountain vacation without it getting awkward.
“Youdid,” she said. “Alex told me everything about what happened. I told him he should have taken the jet last weekend, but there were meetings and delays, and our pilot said it wasn’t safe when there was a blizzard over the Continental Divide.”
“The roads were plenty safe until Rabbit Ears Pass,” I said,thinking I’d imagined she’d said the wordsjetandour pilot.“It was just a freak accident, is all.”
“It was, and he would have gone into that lake if not for you.” Her voice was quite firm and had a ring of authority that probably came from having more than one house and more than one set of adoring staff to manage.
I didn’t really want to know anything about Jasmine-I-Am-Rich-Westmore. I just wanted the conversation to end. Then I’d plow through gathering my things and wiping and scraping snow from the Volvo, and drive Alex to wherever he needed to be dropped off at in Steamboat.
“You’re welcome,” I said, because new me could at least pretend to know how to be polite.
“We’ll want you to join us for dinner tonight,” she said, and I felt my whole body twitched. “Unless you have other plans for your first night in Steamboat?”
“I got the soak and stars package, or whatever it’s called,” I said, hoping that would be enough to put her off. “Got an hour reserved to have a drink in an open air hot tub.”
